In Longview, east Texas, the Patterson Nissan dealership held a contest awarding prizes to the participants who could hold their hands on a car the longest. One contestant dropped out, ran to a nearby store where he broke a gun out of its case, and shot himself. The dealership has now settled the lawsuit by Richard Thomas Vega II’s widow claiming that the stress and sleep deprivation of the event amounted to “brainwashing” and that the sponsors failed to make allowances for temporary loss of sanity. (AP/FoxNews.com, Aug. 17).
6 Comments
The basic complaint is that the dealership allowed somebody to voluntarily participate in something stressful. If that’s a reason to sue somebody, there’s a problem: lawsuits are stressful too, for both sides. Should we also sue lawyers who allow people to sue people?
I’m guessing that the settlement involved a new Nissan.
I think if you’re willing to participate in one of these contests to begin with, you’re a little nuts.
Seems like most of the liability would be in the gun store. Was the gun in the store loaded? Was there reasonable security for the Kmart that would reasonably prevent guns from being stolen? Not that I’m advocating placing the blame anywhere but 100% on the whacko, but the dealer seems a somewhat remote deep pocket for causality when the gun came from Kmart.
I’m with nevins. Did the gun have a trigger lock? Last time I checked it was a policy of K-mart that all of their guns had trigger locks.
Maybe the negligent party was the jack ass who shot himself. Holy Blanking Blank!!! Yet another example of the relationship between truth, fiction, and strangeness. We’re going down the tubes, kids, and this story is just one more piece of pile-on.